Join the BA Bake Club

Jesse Szewczyk, Shilpa Uskokovic
·5 min read

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Photo by Travis Rainey, Food Styling by Jesse Szewczyk, Prop Styling by Christina Allen

Is baking your entire personality? Is The Great British Baking Show your comfort watch? Or maybe you just love eating cookies? Either way, you’re one of us. Come join our BA Bake Club.

We’re Jesse and Shilpa, senior editors and the resident bakers of the Bon Appétit test kitchen. We love to bake—some might even call us obsessive—and we love to talk about all the hows and whys and what-didn’t-works that come with it.

Think of the Bake Club as a book club, but for baking. Each month we share a brand-new meticulously tested recipe. Bake along with us, share your wins (or your fails—we’ve all been there), post pictures, ask us your pressing questions. We’re creating a community of confident, curious bakers who find just as much joy in the process of baking as the final results.

Want to join the club? (Of course you do!) Here’s how:

  • First, and most important, bake this month’s recipe, which you’ll find below.

  • Join our Close Friends on Instagram—just, DM @bonappetitmag proof of your Bon Appétit subscription and we’ll add you to the group. We’ll take you behind the scenes of our recipe development process and you can ask us your baking questions.

  • Post and share photos of your beautiful bakes on Instagram using the hashtag #BABakeClub.

  • Share feedback and ask us questions in the Recipe Notes section of the recipe page in the Epicurious app. We read every comment and look forward to talking with you about butter, sugar, and more.

  • Send your baking questions to bakeclub@bonappetit.com or call in at 212-286-7071 for a chance to be featured on our podcast. Each recipe’s episode goes live at the start of the following month on the Dinner SOS feed.

January 2025: Incredibly Good Homemade Pizza

We live in NYC, one of the greatest pizza cities in the world. So of course we don’t need to make pizza at home. But we choose to! Because it is fun and rewarding. Our new recipe for homemade pizza meets you right where you are: It can come together in fewer than 4 hours and is adaptable to an overnight rest. You don’t need a stand mixer, a clunky baking stone, a specialty oven, or even to change out of your pajamas. And you’ll still get a world-class pie. The decidedly untraditional two-step cooking method (stovetop plus broiler) is a game-changer, guaranteeing a puffy crust with enviable char (or leoparding, as the pros call it).

The dough starts off wet and sticky. To make handling easier, we highly recommend a flexible bowl scraper. A staple in professional kitchens, it’s terrific at gathering doughs and batters, scraping them out of bowls and off of fingers and counters. It’s hard to overstate how often we reach for this unassuming tool every time we bake.

Make the Recipe

December 2024: Chocolate Olive Oil Cake

We love a one-bowl cake. This recipe has fruity olive oil in both the chocolate cake and the swooshy, ganache-like frosting. It’s a low-effort, high-reward centerpiece for your next get-together or celebration. And if there are any leftovers, thanks to that olive oil, the crumb will stay moist and plush for days.

Using Dutch-process cocoa powder gives this cake an intense chocolaty flavor. Our go-to brand for pretty much anything baking-related is Guittard Cocoa Rouge. It has a bold, concentrated complexity without any of the dull chalkiness common in other brands.

Make the Recipe

November 2024: Caramel Apple Monkey Bread

This project bake screams autumn. The perfect follow-up to apple picking, it’s a fruit-studded beauty, drenched in a tangy cider caramel. Between the dough and caramel, this recipe uses almost half a gallon of apple cider. Bake it on Sunday, serve it up for a lucky crowd, and dig in with your hands—pulling apart the caramel-drenched pillows one by one.

Make sure to use a 12-cup or larger Bundt pan for this recipe. Using a smaller variety can result in the dough proofing out of the pan. Nordic Ware actually invented the Bundt pan, and we love their version for its sturdy construction and even heat distribution.

Make the Recipe

Coming Up

Next month, a mashup of two iconic desserts that’s just the thing for lovers and loved ones. You’ll need a springform pan and an ungodly amount of cream cheese.

Until then, we hope a fun pizza night is in your near future. Perhaps with a bottle of wine! And don’t forget to tune in on February 2 to hear us answer all your pizza questions on the Dinner SOS feed.

Originally Appeared on Bon Appétit

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